Commercial convenience may promote ”a quality of being easy, useful or comfortable” for Bend builders and developers, but apparently not for its neighborhoods.

How convenient is it for the residents of Awbrey Butte to have a cellular company regional headquarters in their neighborhood rather than a library, pharmacy, deli, or medical/dental office or community center?

This is but one example of the developer-biased direction proposed by the drafters of the development code that is up for final review and approval by the city council.

All of Bend’s citizens may be surprised to learn about some of the proposed changes that will affect each and every neighborhood, not just Awbrey Butte. For example, new language in ”Draft Development Code Exhibit ‘B’” indicates that ”neighborhood commercial areas are intended to provide locations for small business and services that fit into the residential development pattern and provide a convenience to residents in the immediate neighborhood” and that ”these specific neighborhood commercial sites are permitted outright in residential zones.”

What this proposed change does is to abolish the few existing neighborhood commercial zones and, in essence, makes all residential areas into what amounts to one big neighborhood commercial zone. It isn’t really a zone at all, and developers will be able to put up any building for commercial use without requiring citizen input or oversight.

You may be dismayed to wake up one morning and find a ”100 percent leased” sign on a building in your residential neighborhood without knowing what kind of business will be moving in. We certainly were dismayed.

Residents of Awbrey Butte are experiencing the steamroller effect of Brooks Resources moving Unicel into our neighborhood. When Brooks developed this area, they sold people on a vision that included a commercial business for the convenience of, or benefit to, the neighborhood. One of the original tenants occupying the 19,000-square-foot building at the corner of Merchant Way and Summit, was a grocery store. It only stayed in business a number of months because at that time Awbrey Butte was not built out and there were too few residents to support it. Good idea, bad timing.

In the intervening four years the building has remained vacant, and according to Brooks Resources no retail or convenience commercial tenants were interested.

When Brooks Resources leased the building to Unicel last May, they refused to disclose who the new tenant would be. In addition, the Unicel project was fast tracked and several key requirements fell through the cracks. Brooks did not file a site use plan. Nor did they do a real or intelligent traffic study. They did not notify the community or hold any public hearing prior to the renovation of the building.

Further to the dismay of residents, they began construction of a new parking lot on Merchant Way. Only the houses within 100 feet of the parking lot were notified, but because Brooks would not disclose the tenant who would use the parking lot, people on the butte were in the dark. All of the trees were cut down except one, even though Brooks Resources said they would try to conserve as many as possible. Folks living above the parking lot are left to view concrete, paving and bright lights instead of the natural environment.

Brooks Resources has notified some of the residents on Awbrey Butte that they intend to file an application for a change of use permit to allow the occupancy of Unicel. Brooks Resources cannot move forward with its plans unless it submits an application for a change of use permit.

Unless they just wait for the city council to pass the proposed development code.

That is why the matter of the development code affects all of us, not just Awbrey Butte. Other revelations in the code include the following proposed changes:

1. Allowing higher densities in subdivisions with lot sizes down from 4,000 to 3,000 square feet.

2. Removing the designation industrial park and substituting light industrial and general industrial with the following size requirement: no minimum or maximum size. Think really big box.

I urge the city council to stop and think. Shouldn’t the neighborhood associations of Bend be given the opportunity to meet, go over the code, poll their members and address the neighborhood code language? I also urge the citizens of Bend to review the proposed changes on the city of Bend Web site: www.ci.bend.or.us, departments, community development, draft development code.

The bottom line is that neighborhoods go on indefinitely, long after the developers have made their financial gains and packed their tents. Consequently, the character of neighborhoods as represented by the development code needs to be carefully articulated for the good of all citizens.